His mouth watered. ‘Look, I can’t afford to pay right now.’
‘No need. You’re in luck. I’m in charge of the kitchen today.’ Her smile was infectious, her wink conspiratorial. ‘I’ll leave you to it. But perhaps we can talk later, Finch? About my friend Rom. Roman Delaney?’
Her eyes beseeched him for confirmation.
He nodded and watched her leave before he remembered. The photograph was intact in his pocket. She’s knows I’ve got it – she’ll want to know how I came by it.
Too hungry to worry further about how he was going to extricate himself from his role as go-between, he said a hasty prayer to thank God. French words that came to him from somewhere deep within him.
His hunger satisfied, he thought of the kindness of the girl who loved Rom Delaney and had waited for his return, trapped in this backwater town, the butt of snide remarks.
She’s quite a fighter, this Clytie Hart. No wonder she climbed on the suffragettes’ band-wagon. Not even a rotten tomato could dampen that girl’s spirit.
The meal finished, Finch was startled to see Rom beckoning him urgently from the shadow of the giant elm tree that shaded the hotel’s driveway. He laid the empty tray on the bench and crossed to Rom’s side.
‘Thank God you turned up. She’s seen the photograph she sent you. What do I tell her?’
‘That can wait. Follow me!’
Rom’s face was taut, his words a command not a request. He charged along the main street and up the hill, leaving Finch struggling to keep pace.
We’re heading for the cemetery. What’s the hurry? They’re all dead. Finch arrived panting at the cemetery’s gabled lych gate.
A few rows away Rom was standing in front of a grave, hat in hand, his face shadowed, his eyes haunted. Finch stood by his side and silently read the words.
‘Sacred to the Memory of Robert Hart. Loved and lost by his mother Clytie Ellin Hart. Age five days . . .’ The date was 1901, only a few months earlier.
Finch placed his arm awkwardly around Rom’s shoulder. ‘Dear God, I’m so sorry, mate. What a terrible shock.’
Rom’s voice was harsh. ‘Is it? One in four kids die before they’re five years old. Mine didn’t even live to see out his first week.’ Rom turned on him accusingly. ‘You know what’s hard to take? Clytie didn’t even give my kid the name Delaney. Like I never bloody well existed.’
‘Surely you don’t blame her? She had no choice. She couldn’t use Delaney until she had written proof you acknowledged yourself as his father.’
‘And I never bloody well answered her letter! Too late now.’ Rom shook off Finch’s comforting arm. ‘What are you? Some kind of bush lawyer?’
‘Who knows? I’m only sure of one thing. Your Clytie is a good woman, no matter what narrow minds think of her. She’s suffered enough, Rom. Please make yourself known to her.’
‘I will in time. But I’ll do it my way. I need to get my head around this. My kid is dead. This changes everything. Right now you and I need a place to live. There’s a derelict miner’s right cabin I shacked up in before I enlisted. With a bit of luck it’s still vacant.’
Finch pulled a clump of dandelions from the long grass and placed them at the head of the little grave, alongside a recent spray of bush flowers in a jar of water. He sensed Rom’s thoughts. One love child has died. The other girl is married. Has his other babe survived?
Finch recognised from the slump of Rom’s shoulders that he was grieving, that his curt words masked deep pain. He followed him silently out of the cemetery and along a narrow track that led deep into the heart of the bush. Branches caught at their clothes like tentacles determined to impede them.
• • •
The stone cabin had long ago lost its chimney and door but the roof was relatively intact. Rom’s mood changed like quicksilver.
‘It’s pretty much in the same mess as I left it,’ he said philosophically. ‘But it’ll keep us dry until something better turns up.’
‘Doctor Hundey gave me a good character reference, so I reckon I’ll soon have some money coming in. We’ll survive.’
‘Good for you. Doc’s a rare gent. He often works around the clock. But socially he keeps to himself. No doubt due to his sister – a real oddball. If her remittance cheque from England isn’t at the Post Office she throws a tantrum. People reckon Doc locks her up when the moon is full.’
Finch was stunned. ‘Do you mean, like in a lunatic asylum?’
‘Maybe just town gossip,’ Rom said, throwing his kit bag down. ‘I’ll fetch us clean straw for bedding.’
‘How are you going to do that? Not a brass razoo between us.’
Rom said patiently as if to a child, ‘I was in the V.M.R., remember? Out scouting on the veldt for days, often without army rations. I’m an expert at commandeering whatever I need to survive. You rest easy. I’ll see you right.’
Rom had bolted outside before Finch had right of reply, so he stretched out on his army blanket and used his kit bag for a pillow. He felt a faint wave of guilt that he had left Clytie without a word of thanks, but assured himself he would seek her out tomorrow and answer whatever questions he could – unless he could convince Rom it was time to front up and take full responsibility. Right now Finch had no fight left in him. He gave in and allowed sleep to carry him off – knowing the chances he would be trapped in nightmares in the darkness . . .
• • •
The hotel veranda was empty. Clytie stood, hands on hips, staring at the tray that was empty of every skerrick of food. The bird has flown No wonder with a name like Finch. Just like a man – bolts whenever he feels cornered.
‘Well, he can’t have gone far!’ she said out loud. ‘I’ll track him down if it’s the last thing I do.’
‘Another bloke left you in the lurch, has he, love?’ the new barmaid from Bendigo said in a teasing voice.
‘Piss off, Ginger! You’re talking through your hat.’
Clytie discarded her apron, washed her hands, and retrieved the straw boater that she had covered with a scarf to camouflage the knife-hole she had made in it. She tracked down Mrs Yeoman to establish the hours she had worked, then marched off down the main street in the direction of home.
With waning hope, she checked in at the Post Office in case some long missing letter from Rom had turned up. There was only a flyer for a Women’s Suffrage meeting.
Ballarat. No doubt they’ll get a good crowd. But it’s too far away for me.
‘She’s one of them suffragettes. The kind what hates men,’ Marj Hornery said in a superior tone to the next woman in the queue, yet loud enough for Clytie to hear.
Clytie turned to face her. ‘You should know. This letter’s been steamed open.’
The postmistress blushed. ‘Don’t look at me! How dare you suggest –’
‘Who else? You’re famous for it. How else can you spread all the gossip?’
Clytie left Marj with her slack jaw moving like a fish.
She nodded to the occasional figure she passed but gave no opportunity to be questioned about the presence of Finch.
Clytie was not surprised to see Shadow waiting by her front gate. She knelt and ruffled his ears in the affectionate way Rom had done.
‘Where have you been? There’s something fishy going on, boy. I keep feeling your master is hiding out somewhere. Rom’s just out of sight.’
The Kelpie’s ears pricked up at the sound of Rom’s name.
‘I’ll make you a meal. Just promise me you’ll let me know if you spot Rom.’
Shadow barked as if he understood every word.
‘You’d make a great mind-reader, mate. We could put you in a circus.’
Shadow was eating with reasonably good manners from the tin bowl placed outside her back door. In the process of pouring boiling water into the iron saucepan Clytie chanced to look out the window. Her eye was caught by a movement under the flowering gum tree in the corner. Her pulse quickened but she tried to stay calm.
&nb
sp; Don’t get excited. You thought you saw him watching you at the cemetery – but it was nothing but shadows.
Surely this time it was no mere trick of the light.
Rom stood smoking a cigarette. Dressed in a shabby khaki uniform, his dark hair was lank and longer than she remembered. The intensity of his unblinking stare was unmistakeable.
‘Rom! It’s really you! You kept your promise!’ The words dried in her throat. Conscious of the pot of boiling water, she placed it carefully on the stove.
Untying her apron, she tossed it behind her. Stumbling in haste down the back steps, she called his name joyously over and over.
Halting by the gum tree she looked around in bewilderment at the cow pasture in the next property, the grove of trees, the English hawthorn hedge. There was precious little cover. Rom was nowhere in sight.
She cried out in grief and anger and sank to her knees, beating her fists on the rocky ground, the physical pain a release from her inner anguish.
‘Rom! Stop it! Why are you playing games with me?’
The sharp, ugly sound of her sobbing drew Shadow to squat a few paces away.
Her hand shook as she pointed at him. ‘You go tell your master to stand and face me like a man, you hear?’
Shadow growled and instantly ran off in the direction of the hedge that must have concealed his master’s get-away.
Clytie was shaken to the core by a sighting that moments later began to feel unreal. Was it no more than an image of Rom she had created in her imagination, a desperate desire to bring him back to her?
She felt buffeted by waves of confusion. Her emotions were in conflict, as if responding to the beat of a metronome that rapidly swung her between deep longing and anger at being cheated of touching him, hearing his voice. Had Rom bolted yet again?
Clytie stood transfixed, staring at the space at the end of the garden where she had seen him. Then she ran to explore the exact spot. Her fingers traced the broken twigs on the earth, looking for tell-tale signs of footprints. There was nothing to prove that Rom had been standing there.
When Shadow reappeared he eyed her warily. She grabbed hold of his collar and yelled at him.
‘You saw him too, didn’t you! It was Rom!’
Shadow lowered his head as if he expected to be reprimanded for his failure to retrieve his master.
‘That soldier must know if Rom’s hiding out somewhere. I’ll make him tell me if it’s the last thing I do.’
It was then she remembered Madame Zaza’s warning the night the circus arrived in Hoffnung. She repeated the prediction aloud, a bitter laugh at the edge of her words: ‘Beware of the man with no name. He’s not to be trusted . . . Well, Shadow, that’s hardly surprising. Show me the man who can be trusted.’
As if to prove his own worth to her, Shadow encircled her legs in the manner of rounding up a lost sheep to return her to the fold.
‘All right, all right, Shadow. I get the message – we’ll go home. But at the crack of dawn we’ll hunt down that bloke who claims to be Rom’s friend. And heaven help him if he tries to lie to me!’
• • •
Rom hurtled through the bush, dodging between thick patches of scrub to camouflage his flight. His stomach churned. He felt waves of shame, triggered by the memory of Clytie on her hands and knees as she desperately searched the ground for his footprints. He tried to shake off his unexpected reaction to the sight of her.
I’d forgotten just how damned beautiful she is. Having a kid has changed her. From a pretty girl – into a real woman.
Feeling distinctly uneasy, he replayed the sound of Clytie’s voice – her cry of joy on seeing him that had swiftly turned to anguish, confusion and rage.
Watching her scavenge among the leaves and twigs for some proof of him, he had stretched out a hand towards her back, wanting to stroke the thick plait of hair that hung down to her waist. Sensual memories stirred in him of the times he had unwound that braid and draped her hair over her naked body. A preliminary act to their love-making that had aroused in him unaccustomed feelings of tenderness and awe entangled with his usual lust – like the three strands of a new braid, a cluster of feelings no other girl had ever aroused in him.
Yet why was it that this time, only moments earlier, his hand had frozen in the act, unable to connect with her body? Overcome by a sudden surge of panic, he had fled, feeling more guilt than a deserter from a battlefield.
What the hell made me bolt? Clytie wants me. I want her. I tricked Finch into playing go-between for his sake as well as mine. But I’ve never knocked back the chance to bed Clytie before. It doesn’t make sense. Maybe the timing is wrong.
Maybe first off I have to clean up the mess I left behind me. I can’t take care of her while I’m a down-and-out swaggie.
At the bottom of the hill Rom was stopped short by the creek, its floodwaters hurtling over rocks and banks as if something was in hot pursuit of it. Too dangerous to cross – even for him, a strong swimmer.
Shadow had him cornered, growling in warning, about to spring on him as if he was nothing but some renegade who had endangered Clytie.
‘Hey, Shadow, it’s me! Jesus, don’t tell me you’ve forgotten me already!’
Shadow approached him stealthily, sniffed him, then rubbed his head against Rom’s trouser leg.
‘Good boy, that’s more like it.’
Rom squatted on his haunches and ruffled Shadow’s ears in their time-honoured greeting.
‘I can see you’ve been taking good care of Clytie, like I told you to. Good lad. He paused. ‘The problem is, I can’t come back right now. I’ve got to sort things out first. Tricky stuff. Meanwhile, keep my return secret, right? Don’t worry, I’ll work things out – you know me. I’ve had more lives than a cat. I’ll face Clytie when the time is right.’
Shadow reacted to Clytie’s name, wagging his tail, his eyes fixed intently on Rom’s face, ready to take orders.
‘Go back to Clytie, mate. Take care of her for me, right? That’s an order!’
His voice had taken on a military tone. Shadow cast him a final glance before bounding back into the bush.
Content with that excuse and an undefined plan of action, Rom walked in a zigzag pattern through the bush until he came to a fallen tree trunk that acted as a safe conduit across the creek. He remembered exactly where to find his target. The cluster of isolated cottages lay half-concealed in dense bush that had not only grown close to the house but in some cases had pierced the broken windows and empty doorways. Conscious of his duty of care, the mateship that had been his strongest emotion in South Africa, he scouted among ruined cabins and isolated farms where the owners were absent, no doubt at some service on the hill of churches.
‘Finders keepers,’ he muttered in reassurance as he commandeered what was needed for Finch.
Only once did he hesitate. In the barn of a stingy farmer who had short-changed Rom’s pay after he had done labouring work for him, Rom spotted two rifles affixed to the wall.
‘That bastard doesn’t need two shot-guns. He’s a rotten shot anyway. Couldn’t hit an elephant at ten paces.’
He liberated one of the rifles and slung it over his shoulder. Then helped himself to an old shovel for good measure.
‘A labourer’s worthy of his hire, so the Bible says – if you can believe that stuff.’
He began whistling The Girl I Left Behind Me as he turned his footsteps towards the miner’s right cabin, enjoying the feeling of the warm night air as the shadows multiplied and danced around him.
Chapter 29
Sunrise was the most reliable clock in the world. The rays that fell across Finch’s face caused him to blink awake, surprised by the strange new surroundings that had looked very different on his arrival the previous evening. As if by sleight of hand, the damp foul-smelling chaff had been removed and he found he was lying on clean straw.
He was surprised to see a rifle standing on the earth floor, propped against the wall. Finch instinctively t
urned away from it.
Through the door-less frame he could see that his only other shirt, underpants and socks were hanging on a clothes line rigged up out of fencing wire slung between two saplings. The darker blotches on the khaki shirt proved they had been washed and had almost dried overnight.
Better still he found a billycan of fresh milk on top of the tree stump that some past woodcutter had levelled to form a table. Beside it lay a pile of bush fruit and a box of matches ready to boil a second billycan, blackened by fire but useable and filled with water. He was elated by the greatest luxury of all – a crumpled packet labelled ‘Billy Tea’ that was almost half full of tea.
Finch rolled over, laughing out loud. ‘No matter what else you’ve done wrong, Rom, you’ll get into heaven for this.’
‘Give me your written guarantee on that, will you?’ Rom was leaning against a tree trunk, arms folded across his chest, a twisted smile on his face.
‘You should be awarded the Victoria Cross for saving the life of a wounded soldier.’
Rom gave him a sly look. ‘Yeah, I reckon we could pawn a V.C. for a few bob. But there’s a catch. First I’d have to get my name struck off the list of Missing Presumed Dead.’
They squatted around the campfire and breakfasted together in companionable silence.
‘I was a bit of an arsehole yesterday,’ Rom said at last. ‘Seeing little Robert’s grave was a real blow.’
‘Think nothing of it. It must have been a hell of a shock.’
Finch poured another mug of tea before judging the time was right to tread on delicate ground. ‘What do you want me to do about Clytie? We can’t keep the poor girl hanging much longer. It’s clear she believes I’m the key to finding you – and I am.’
‘Continue acting as my go-between a bit longer, while I sort out my plan of action.’ Rom tried to disguise the rasp in his voice. ‘I care about Clytie – more than I ever told her. But I feel lost somehow – like I don’t really belong here anymore. Understand? I reckon war changes everyone.’
Golden Hope Page 31
